This blog is dedicated to holding Congressman Jim Walsh accountable. Walsh has lost touch with Central New York and sold us out by voting Washington special interest first and his constituents a distant second.

In the new Democrat-controlled Congress, Walsh has quickly reversed those numbers. Since the 110th Congress convened in January, Walsh has broken ranks with his Republican colleagues on seven out of 10 key votes, according to an analysis by The Post-Standard.

Well it works out well for the Sub-Standard when Walsh has only opposed the Republicans 13 times in 62 votes, but they choose 7 of those times in thier 10 votes.

Walsh is still voting with the Republicans 79% of the time, it's down slightly from 91% last year, and 84% a month ago, but hardly a New Walsh.

4 Comments:

Hmm, I'm not sure what the best way to count votes, since so many of the votes in congress are procedural and almost eunanomous.

All parties should state their methods, and for the sake of comparison, also say how often Walsh votes with Pelosi. In my casual observation, I think he votes with her more often than he votes with Boehner. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but neither the Sub Standard nor the Watcher are helping me figure out whether it's true.

The methodology is simple, I use the washington post site linked on my website to get all the votes, how jim walsh voted, the Democratic Position and the Republican position, then I eliminate all votes where the parties have the same position, because they are votes on things like congradulating sports teams and naming buildings. With the votes I have left I calculate how often Walsh votes with the Republicans, which is 79% of the time, he would vote with the Democrats 21% of the time. If I were to leave in the other votes, his percentage of voting with the Republicans would be up around 95% of the time, and like 35% of the time with the Democrats.

One important point to consider: the Democrats have put forth important votes, but not necessarily votes that are difficult to oppose (despite Walsh's indefensible difficulty supporting them for the first 6 years of Bush...). For example, I appreciate Walsh's stand against the troop surge. That was important and shows he woke up (well, 12% of him woke up). It was indeed a departure from his party. BUT, he has said repeatedly that he is not in favor of bringing our troops home. The troop surge vote obscured the issue of how we are going to get out of the war, and you can bet that if the Dems put votes like that on the floor Walsh will side with his own party. So the question is, just how new is that 12%?